BuzzFeed noticed that if you want to send Snoop Lion a message on Facebook and you're not Snoop Lion's friend, Facebook will charge you $15 to deliver that message.

You may remember that last December, as BuzzFeed reported, Facebook started a pilot program to charge users a dollar to send messages to strangers (this functionality used to be free). If users choose not to pay, their messages go to the somewhat hidden "other" mailbox. At the time Facebook told Buzzfeed it was "tinkering with [the price] over time."

Tinker they did. Without announcement, Facebook upped the price for some messages to $5 and even $15. "At the time of announcing the test we let people know we would be testing a variety of prices," Facebook told BuzzFeed. "The highest price we are currently testing in the US is $15, but this is still a test and these prices are not set in stone. We have tested a range of different prices so far."

Snoop Lion didn't set that price. He won't make any money off of that $15. That price is not a guarantee that Snoop Lion will read the message; the best-case scenario is probably that one of his handlers will read the message, but it's more likely that your message will just get ignored. Could you imagine if an email provider started to charge money based on the people you're contacting? How is this any different?

Facebook has tried very hard to make its users think of Facebook as the internet; they want to keep their users inside the Facebook experience, rather than sending them to outside websites. And the more successful they are at that mission, the more they'll try to get away with shit like this. They'll convince you to rely on their crippled version of the internet, and then they'll charge you to use that internet.